Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Chicken and leek pie

Looking for something easy of a Sunday
evening (oi, no sniggering at the back there!), I decided to try to the Hairy
Biker’s chicken and leek pie from the October 2011 edition of the Good Food
magazine.

It’s been about (counts on fingers) 20
years since I made pastry, at my mammy’s knee. Nothing’s changed in pastry
making in that time. So, for the pastry…

350g flour

200g butter

1 egg

A glass of water, with a spoon

Either tip the flour and butter into the
food processer and blitz or in a bowl, rub the butter into the flour until it
all looks like breadcrumbs. Add the beaten egg and mix. Add the water a
spoonful at a time until it all comes together in a ball.

Pop it onto a plate and cover with cling
film.

For the filling, you’ll need:

3 chicken filets

A knob of butter

2 leeks, chopped

Lardons

A few cloves of garlic to taste

About 50g of butter

About 50g flour

About 200ml milk

About 150ml cream

About 200ml stock

Salt and pepper

Poach the chicken in some stock (you’ll
probably need more than the 250ml cited above) for about 10-15 mins. Once done,
cut them into bite-sized pieces and keep the cooking liquid for the sauce.

While the chicken is cooking, you can get
on with the rest of the dish. Melt the knob of butter in a large pot and sweat
out the leeks. Cook them for about 5 mins and add the crushed garlic and
lardons and cook for another couple of minutes. When done, transfer this to a
bowl.

In another saucepan, melt the 50g of butter and
then add the flour. Cook this for about 1 minute, stirring constantly. Off the
heat, add the milk, bit by bit, stirring until the first bit is incorporated
before adding the next bit. Add the stock and bring to the boil to cook through.
Pour in the cream and season as you like. Add the chopped up chicken and the
leek mixture and stir to combine.

For the fun bit: heat the oven to 200
degrees and line a 23 cm pie dish. Pie dishes seem to be a bit hard to come by
in Belgium, so I used a cake tin. It worked perfectly. Let your baking paper
hang over the edges - I usually line the bottom with two long, wide pieces of
baking paper at right angles to each other and out of the tin to use as handles
once it's cooked and a circle of baking paper on top of this.

Divide the pastry into 2/3 + 1/3. Roll the
2/3 out to fit into your dish – including the sides! (about 3-4 millimetres
thick). Brush the edges of the pie with beaten egg. Pour in the chicken and
leek filling. Roll the 1/3 to fit the top of your dish and lay this across.
Press to seal the edges and brush the top with the rest of the beaten egg. Make
a hole in the centre to let out the steam, and pop into your oven for about
35-40 mins.

Once cooked, let it cool for a good bit
before eating (cooling it also makes it easier to remove from the cake tin). We
ate this au natural with a bottle of good beer to wash it down.

Variations: I omitted the lardons and
replaced them with some left over carrot and peas. You
could also add a spoonful of your favourite mustard to the sauce once it’s
cooked. A couple of tarragon leaves or other herbs such as parsley or chives
mightn’t go amiss either. The leeks are changeable too with whatever veg you
have around, such as spinach (make sure it’s very well dried first) or
mushrooms.

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About Me

Hello! I'm Katie, and I've been living in Belgium for about ten years. Belgian food is delicious, but sometimes you just need something that reminds you of home. Finding this can pose a problem in Belgium, so I often make this from scratch. I don't grow our own or milk cows or anything like that, but I do cook with food that my grandmother would recognise.
I also love Asian and Indian food and I often make this too (it’s the only way to guarantee you get the spiciness you need!). I try to cook low-fat, although some things I just refuse to meddle with (such as sticky toffee pudding). I'll be blogging about my kitchen (mis)adventures here.

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